Author Talk: Lauren Klein and Tanvi Sharma on "Data by Design"

Join visualization historian Lauren Klein and designer Tanvi Sharma for a conversation about their new book Data by Design: Visualization and Power from Abolition to the Dawn of Data Science. The book returns to the history of data visualization to expose the power of charts and maps—and to show how they can be used for social change. Lauren and Tanvi will be in conversation with Arvind Satyanarayan, a professor of data visualization at MIT.

Lauren Klein is Professor of Data & Decision Sciences and English at Emory University, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab and the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network. Her research brings together computational and critical methods to explore questions of gender, race, and justice, both in early America and today. Klein is the author (with Catherine D’Ignazio) of the award-winning Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020), and the editor (with Matthew K. Gold) of Debates in the Digital Humanities (Univ. of Minnesota Press), among other publications.

Tanvi Sharma is a design technologist working at the intersection of data, aesthetics, and the humanities. She is currently an Art Director at Apple and co-author of Data by Design (MIT Press, 2026). She has previously worked at Pentagram, Public Policy Lab, and Spotify. She lives in Harlem, NY, with her two cats, Yuchi and Bubbles. More at tanvi.network.

Arvind Satyanarayan is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at MIT EECS, and leads the Visualization Group at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). His research uses visualization as a petri dish to study intelligence augmentation (IA), or how computation can amplify our cognition and creativity, while respecting our agency. Open-source visualization systems developed by Arvind and his collaborators are widely used by researchers, companies, and journalists. Arvind’s research has been recognized with several awards including, most recently, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.